Indoctrinate U

Indoctrinate U is a 2007 American feature-length documentary film written by, directed by and starring Evan Coyne Maloney, on ideological conformism and political correctness in American higher education. Among other things, the film examines the use of institutional mechanisms such as speech codes, which are used to punish students who express political views that are unpopular within academia.

The film covers anti-military protests at UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University, treatment of conservative students at Cal Poly and the University of Tennessee, racial and ethnic politics at the University of Michigan and Yale, teaching at Duke and Columbia, among other subjects. It also includes interviews with David French and Greg Lukianoff, (then respectively president and director of legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), Glenn Reynolds, Daniel Pipes and others.

Maloney spent two and a half years making the documentary by conducting interviews on various college campuses and with various thinkers. The film was preceded by two shorter versions, Brainwashing 101 and Brainwashing 201: The Second Semester. The two shorts led the 2004 American Film Renaissance festival to select Indoctrinate U as its “most anticipated documentary.” In March 2007, Maloney appeared on Hannity’s America to discuss the film. On April 19 of the same year, he appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal where they showed clips from the film and took calls. Indoctrinate U was produced by On the Fence Films with the support of the Moving Picture Institute, and Stuart Browning, Blaine Greenberg, and Thor Halvorssen. The film’s executive producers are Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. Its associate producer is Frayda Levy. It was edited by Chandler Tuttle.